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Page 277
softer than hatred for her. Sir Fulk and Sir Henry were the king's lickspittles and dogsbodies. They were low and brutal, lechers and sadists who were employed on those tasks any man of honor would flatly refuse even from the king.
In the minds of alinor's guests, it was an offense that stank to heaven, that such men should have been proposed as suitable to marry Alinor. True, most of the male guests were indifferent to the brutality of the proposed grooms. What was offensive to them was that the men were outsiders, crude and common, whom, nonetheless, the king preferred to themselves. It was upon Fulk and Henry that favors were heaped. It was to them the king turned in his idle hours. And, if they realized that it was so because Fulk and Henry obeyed John without question, without remonstrating about honor and legality, so much the more offensive was the king's act. After all, the king's nobles were his natural advisors. It was his duty to take counsel with them and to act according to their advice.
The women, except for Isobel, were simply horrified by the thought of the life Alinor would have led. Isobel, who knew Alinor very well indeed, thanked God that such a marriage had not brought the sin of murder upon her friend. She might have wept and prayed and endured. Alinor would, Isobel knew, either kill the man herself or arrange to have him removed out of her way. Yet Isobel was in no way offended by Alinor's pretense of fear and frailty. Weakness was a woman's rightful weapon. Isobel had rather see Alinor using that than a knife.
The initial shock over, the guests crowded forward to offer oblique sympathy and, a few, open support. Alinor's vassals were at one on that subject. Many of them were fond of their overlady, but that was not their reason. The thought of having Fulk de Cantelu or Henry of Cornhill as their liege lord increased their loyalty to Alinor and Ian to fever pitch. Neither their

 
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